(January 24, 2023 at 5:47 pm)GrandizerII Wrote:(January 24, 2023 at 1:01 pm)emjay Wrote: To be absolutely clear, I'm not trying to describe behaviourism here... I despise behaviourism. That's not what this is about at all for me. Behaviourism would have it that there is no cognition or emotional states involved, just switchboard-like actions and reactions. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm saying that every phenomenally conscious state has a corresponding neural state, or that's the contention anyway, including cognitive and emotional states. The behaviourists thought they could explain everything in terms of the inputs and outputs of the system, ignoring that there were other internal processes going on... ignoring the black box of cognition and emotion and all the rest, as it were... but I'm not ignoring that black box, just saying that whatever goes on within it, has a physical and neural basis. For instance say someone took some time thinking about a course of action. Behaviourism couldn't account for that... there being some variable amount of time between input and output... but a view that recognises those internal cognitive processes, whether it could directly observe them or not, could, at least in theory.
I know you're not defending behaviorism, and no one else should interpret you as defending behaviourism. I brought the term up because the example of dogs salivating in response to bells (which was brought up earlier in response to what you were saying) is a classic example of classical conditioning (which is a behaviourist term). And then made my own point about it.
No worries... I didn't think you were really attacking me there, I just wanted to make my position clear.
